-DATE-
19670129
-YEAR-
1967
-DOCUMENT_TYPE-
SPEECH
-AUTHOR-
F. CASTRO
-HEADLINE-
CASTRO SPEECH ON ANNIVERSARY OF MARTI'S BIRTH
-PLACE-
SAN ANDRES
-SOURCE-
HAVANA DOMESTIC TV & RAD
-REPORT_NBR-
FBIS
-REPORT_DATE-
19670129
-TEXT-
CASTRO SPEECH ON ANNIVERSARY OF MARTI'S BIRTH
Havana Domestic Television and Radio Service in Spanish 0300 GMT 29 January
1967--F/E
(Speech by Prime Minister Fidel Castro at ceremonies inaugurating several
buildings in San Andres, Pinar del Rio, and marking the 114th anniversary
of Marti's birth--live)
(Text) Comrades of the party and the government, residents of San Andres,
pupils of the first boarding school of San Andres: It is with great
pleasure that we meet tonight in a ceremony which for all of us has great
importance. Many will think that the residents of San Andres have reason
to feel happy on this day, but not only San Andres residents; we all have
reason tonight to feel as happy as any San Andres resident.
San Andres residents tonight see a stage in the swift development of this
region, but we also see in the development of San Andres the work of the
revolution and an idea of what our fatherland will be in the future. San
Andres is a preview. In its social situation, particularly education, San
Andres in about a year will be what we expect a large part of the nation,
and if possible the whole nation, to be by 1975.
San Andres is th first of the three pilot plans that are being carried
out; that is, the first plan which can present a part of the plan carried
out, because tonight we inaugurated the first boarding school for 300
students and five children's nurseries, the first of a number of projects
in this town of a program that is to include another school like this,
three schools smaller than this for 150 students, and five more children's
nurseries.
If the comrades of the Construction Ministry (Micons) maintain during 1967
the magnificent rate at which they carried out these first projects we have
no doubt that by the end of this year, as far as San Andres is concerned,
the plan will be completely finished.
It is fair, therefore, that we recognize the efforts of the Micons
comrades, and above all the Micon comrades of Pinar del Rio Province,
because this school has been built (applause) in just six months. Six
months ago there was nothing here. Six months ago only weeds grew here,
and the land was quite flooded. There were practically no children's
nurseries here six months ago; the selection of sites for the various
schools and nurseries was just being completed, and the comrades, the
architects, were working hard on the plans.
Because in this case every school was to be located according to the
distribution of the population, and always looking for th healthiest sites,
the most adequate sites, nearest to the families whose children are going
to those nurseries or those schools, our architects and planners visited
every one of the sites.
Working with them also was a team of comrades who were generally entrusted
with the plan, but we must say that everybody has given the San Andres plan
great cooperation. It was given by the comrades in the provinces; it
was given by the army comrades and by the technician comrades and the
Education Ministry comrades. In other words, this is an example of a
plan which has been coordinated in a happy manner, and we have been able to
count on everybody's enthusiasm. That is why it has progressed so far.
This plan began to be conceived practically a year ago. In one year all
the planting of coffee has been completed. Over a million coffee plants
have been planted with anew technique, in terraces to protect the plants
from erosion. The coffee is doing fine. It is clean. In the nurseries
hundreds of women from this area worked to prepare the nurseries. In the
planting of the coffee, hundreds of comrades of the Young Communist Union
worked from the province and elsewhere. Hundreds of comrades of the army
worked on it. In an effort to meet thee goals at the indicated dates,
great mobilizations were made, and thanks to this the coffee planting plan
was fully successful. Coffee is growing at an enormous rate.
It is planted with advanced techniques, and this is not all. Maximum
application of fertilizers are going to be made, and something more--even
never techniques which consist of the application of growth hormones to
that coffee are going to be used. This means that the residents of this
region and all of us are going to be able to observe a new phenomenon. It
used to be supposed that a coffee plant grew when it was planted, cared
for, cultivated, cleaned of weeds, irrigated or rained on, and fertilized.
Now there is something new. We are going to accelerate the growth process
of these plants. In this sense, this is also going to become a pilot plan,
and growth hormones are going to be applied to these million and some odd
plants. Possibly by next year there will already be enough coffee to pick
in these plantations. (applause) We must await the results. As I told
you before, this is of an experimental nature, but the results we obtain
here can be applied on other plantations and even to other crops.
Returning to the subject to schools, I said that if the rate and enthusiasm
with which work is being performed this year is maintained. By the end of
the year all the installations should be finished, therefore all the
children, all the children from one month of age to those in the last year
of junior high school will have their own institutions. This means that
all the population, all the children of this region--approximately
2,000--will have their childrens nurseries, their primary schools from the
first through the third grade, and their schools of higher levels--from
the fourth grade to the last year of high school. It is going to be the
first place in the country to have this. It will be followed by Gran
Tierra in Oriente Province and Vanao in Las Villas Province, in that order.
They are not yet progressing at such a rapid rate as this region. However,
this one will be converted into a veritable pilot plan of extraordinary
interest.
It is of extraordinary interest because possibly, possibly, a plan of this
type, of this characteristics, has never been put into effect in any other
country, and never put into effect with the characteristics that this plan
is going to have. Possibly we will be the first country in the world to
carry out a program of education of this magnitude, of this quality. We
hope to do what we are doing here in San Andres throughout the entire
country. The installations are of magnificent quality. We must
congratulate the comrade architects who worked on these installations,
which have a large amount of light, a large amount of ventilation. More
healthful installations than these cannot be observed. The same thing can
be said about the children's nurseries. They have the area for nursing
children, and an area for those a little older. They have enclosed areas
and outdoor areas where they can move with complete freedom.
Young teachers and professors trained completely in these years of
revolution have been selected to direct this school and to teach in it.
Possibly their average age--adding the ages of all the comrades who are
going to be in the administration and teaching of this school, including
junior high school professors, primary school teachers, physical education
professors, and agricultural technicians, adding the ages of all of
them--is not more than 18 years. It is possible that never, no educational
center, has ever had a teaching and administrative body as young as the
personnel who are going to direct this school. They have graduated from
our teaching institutes, from our technical institutes, others from the
physical education and sports institute. This means that there was quality
in the selection and training of the teaching personnel. There is youth,
there is enthusiasm, and that is why we have the right to feel optimistic
about the success of the education that is going to be imparted in this
school.
Women of this region are also going to work in the children's nurseries,
women of this region who were trained in short courses to take care of the
children. And in addition, at the head of each nursery will be a graduate
teacher from the Makarenko Teachers Institute. The installation, the
environmental conditions, the hygienic conditions, the personnel of the
children's nurseries will be of high quality, and we can expect optimum
work with the children from them.
In these schools, the most important thing, however, will not be the
quality of the installations, but the conception of these schools. There
is no doubt that all of us have seen many schools in our countryside.
Before the revolution there were not many. There were some schools in the
country. Certainly a large part of the schoolage population of the
countryside did not have schools or did not have teachers. The revolution
first of all brought teachers, and every time it was possible a little
school was built. But the teachers were brought to all the children of the
countryside. Anyone would have said that his was a big victory, that this
was a big step forward because the families were always asking for schools,
teachers, and when a teacher arrived there was joy and when a school was
organized there was happiness. And in any nation of this continent, it was
always joy to receive a teacher or a school.
We have achieved this, yet can we feel gratified about it? Is this
something our people yearned for? Schools everywhere, teachers everywhere.
But despite this we often see isolated schools, poor schools; often they
are not schools but huts. And the children get there from shorter or
longer distances, better or worse fed, and are in school only a few hours.
When it was just one session they would spend four or five hours in school.
What did the children do the rest of the day? Now they go to school and
return home and eat lunch, and sometimes they also return in the afternoon.
But undoubtedly the children had plenty of free time without anyone
knowing what they were doing. Doing what? A boy with imagination invents
anything--good and bad. And often the bad things ahead of the good ones.
They do this to pass the time, to kill time. the children had no place for
sports, no place to read a book. No books were available; it was supposed
that each house had a library. There were no playing fields. They spent
their time as they chose. It is precisely during these extracurricular
hours that many bad habits are picked up where many vices are picked up,
where the children go astray, and where they are really not going to
develop their intelligence or their bodies.
Under this system or idea the lives of children from the time they are a
month old, in short from the period which social legislation calls
(?working maternity), in other words when a mother can go back to work,
from that moment a child can go to the nursery, and the lives of all the
children will be perfectly organized. They will be perfectly cared for.
They will go to the nurseries in the mornings, very early, and they will
return to their homes at dusk. And when they are old enough for the first
grade their entire life will be organized around the school. They will
have their studies, playing fields, and food there. They will go there
on Mondays and return on Friday and perhaps on Saturdays.
It could, of course, be said that it is better that they go home on Fridays
or that they use Saturdays for sports in the school (applause) and they go
home at noon on Saturdays. This would mean that the teachers would have
free time, a half day Saturday and all day Sunday.
We have no doubt at all that the children will be anxious for Monday to
come to go to school because they will have everything at school, at the
installations; their lives will be perfectly organized in a pleasant and
attractive manner.
In other words there will not be any more hours to kill, no more chances
for children to go astray to pick up bad habits. They will always be under
the supervision of highly-qualified personnel. They will be educated
mentally, physically,, and socially. They will pick up the best habits a
society can give a human being, the best sentiments, the best ideas. They
will be prepared for life in those schools. If we ask why so many
conflicts in a human being, if we ask why so many quarrels, so much
suffering, so much mortification, if we ask why so many devote themselves
to making life bitter for so many, the answer no doubt is that human beings
have been unprepared for life, that they have not been taught to life
socially, to live in relation with others, they have not been prepared for
life in human society.
Of course, this could not take place in any form where the way of obtaining
food, their way of making a living is an isolated, primitive, and selfish
way. That is why all those things happened which we saw expressed
magnificently here tonight about the history of the peasants, the history
of the foremen, the landowners, the rural guards, the history of the
peasant and his wife, the kilometers of distance to walk to (?hospitals),
not knowing what hospital to take her to, how much it would cost her, how
he would pay for it, without any communications, who knows how many
kilometers away, without money, paying a third or half of what he harvested
every year to the landowner so that thousands of families worked for a
family.
It is logical that under such conditions nothing could exist that looked
like this. It is logical that under such conditions one could not even
think about educating man to live in society, because under such
conditions man tried not to live but to survive. And no one taught him to
survive. To the contrary, everyone tried to survive by himself in his own
way, or in any way. It was simply a matter of survival. And to survive
they did whatever occurred to them. Many who had been unable to go to a
school to learn to read and write did what they could to survive under the
most disadvantageous conditions, under the most difficult conditions.
(Words indistinct) to live in a society it is first necessary to know what
society one is going to prepare that man for. And logically, in a society
where the law of the survival of the fittest, or of the most astute, or the
smartest, is in effect, or a society where individualism, egoism prevails
and it is very man for himself, you could not teach anyone to live. You
can only hope to establish education for life in a society based on quite
different foundations.
You cannot preach about a sense of human fraternity where the indispensable
condition for living is to take something form someone else, bother someone
else, damn someone else. One can only develop a sense of human fraternity
or human solidarity to the ultimate level in a society which has as a base
and can only have as a base solidarity and fraternity among human beings,
where human beings can help each other, where men join forces to create
wealth, where men join forces to exploit the resources of nature: the land,
the water; where men join forces to apply technology, to apply
intelligence, to work the machinery, to achieve all this. All this, which
looks beautiful, this school itself which is completed, beautifully
completed and lighted, has required the efforts of many men, men who
produce the cement in the cement plants, those who produce the steel, the
efforts of the lumbermen, the transport workers, the efforts of the
technicians, the roadbuilders, the efforts of the electricians. Man can
create beautiful things, but we must ask how can he create them. Beautiful
things such as this school, those nurseries, this road, park, restaurant,
that store, the commercial center, the tobacco warehouse, projects such as
those that will continue to be carried out, such as the hydraulic projects
that will have to be completed here to supply water so that we will have
irrigation, so that we will have bigger crops. Projects such as these,
many of them of extraordinary benefit for everyone, can be carried out, but
we must ask: how can this be done? They could not be done if it were not
the united efforts of men.
The revolution is seeking to see that the united efforts of men will create
wealth, create marvels for men, that the creators of this wealth can create
it for themselves, that the people create marvels, not for others but for
themselves, and here in this project that we have before us is a good
example of how the people can create marvels for themselves. (applause)
Our workers, with their hands, with their vigor, their intelligence have
created projects that will serve the welfare and happiness of many,
projects that will serve to bring happiness and satisfaction to all because
there will not be a single family in this valley of San Andres of
Caiguanavo. Not one single family, which will not see something that has
been done for all. (applause) There will not be a single family which will
not have the happiness of seeing their children in one of these centers, of
seeing them growing happily, of seeing them educated, but educated in a
spirit of profound solidarity, fraternity, educated in that new concept
(words indistinct). and that is the revolution, and that is what revolution
means. This is what our revolution means, that all can benefit, that all
can receive the fruits of their labor. This means that all receive the
fruit of the labor of all. And when the first grains of coffee are
harvested we will have to think of the women who carried the seed to the
germinating beds, who transplanted the first seedlings out of the sun, who
care for them.
We must think of the Young Communists and the soldiers who planted them.
We must think of the workers who have kept the plantation free of weeds.
We must think of the efforts of many who created wealth for the many. Our
watchword in a new society must be that of creating such wealth as the
hands of man and his intelligence are capable of creating for the benefit
of all.
One must not even ask if one is going to partake of the coffee from the
plant that one planted but rather that someone is going to partake of the
coffee from that plant. And perhaps we will drink the coffee from the
plant that someone else is planting. Or when we eat the bread that was
made by someone else.
We will work for ourselves. We will work for all, and we can create all
that we are willing to crate, all that we have a need to create. These
children will receive an extensive education. They will receive training
and will learn to live, study, and work. These schools will not be schools
such as those that we attended in the past by a minority of the children of
rich families, children who did not have the slightest concept of work--why
would they need to know about work?--and in that society the work was done
by the poor, and in the society the rich did not know work, nor did they
need to know work because others worked for them. The children will be
educated in the concept of work from their earliest years. And if they are
in the first grade and they are six years old, they will learn to raise
something even if it is only a head of lettuce, and they will learn how a
head of lettuce is raised, and they will likewise learn how beautiful it is
to raise a head of lettuce.
Perhaps they will learn how to water a small plant or they will learn how
to water the garden, creating a (?happier) environment. They will do
whatever they can. However, it will be necessary from the time that they
begin to think to learn about and have an idea of how material goods are
produced, how technology is applied to produce many material goods. They
must being to get an idea that material goods do not fall from heaven, that
they must be produced by working. And in addition they will acquire a most
worthy idea of what work is, not as it was in the past when work was
thought to be something to be despised, not work as a sacrifice but work as
even being a pleasure, work as something pleasant, the most pleasant the
most beautiful that man can and must do.
Work must not even be thought of as a duty but as a moral need, a form of
investing time worthily, usefully. For the rest, with the help of machinery
and technology, man will free himself more and more every day from work in
the sense of brute, physical effort. And here in San Andres itself where
there are more--or there were more--than 1,000 oxen and all the land was
prepare with yokes of oxen--what did this mean? It meant that every year
the land had to be plowed, that hundreds of heads of families had to yoke
up their teams very early, hook up the plow and walk behind the oxen plow
and prepare the soil. And truly this is hard work when a man has to handle
a plow behind a yoke of oxen. There are not two but three oxen plowing the
land (applause) because the man has to make as a great an effort as either
of the oxen. And that is the way our peasants had to do it in this valley,
and many still have to do it still in many places, plow the land in this
manner.
When the 19 or 20 tractors--I do not remember how many--arrived here, this
misery of having to plow the soil with oxen disappeared immediately. The
need to have 1,000 oxen also disappeared. However, there is still some
little work that must be done with oxen, particularly in tobacco, but no
longer the work of plowing the soil. It is the work of doing some
cultivation in tobacco with oxen. It is not so hard and is an insignificant
amount compared to all the work that had to be done with them before
tractors.
There will be a surplus of almost 1,000 oxen because the peasants will be
able to do that little bit of work with fewer oxen. Instead of oxen they
can now keep cows, cows that will produce milk and meat on the same area in
which the oxen grazed previously. They will work animals that could not be
slaughtered and therefore could not produce meat, they will not produce
milk. Therefore when machinery was introduced all the workers were
relieved of that tremendous physical effort that they used to have to do
every year. In addition, land is made available where they can keep
hundreds of cows to produce thousands of liters of milk every day. Here
all this plan of social development, of education development, will be
accompanied by economic development. It will be accompanied by technical
development, agricultural development. Therefore, in this same valley in
coming years three, four, or five times more will be produced than was
being produced previously.
We should not have any fear that there will be a shortage of food for any
of the children that are going to be attending the schools because here, in
this same region, agricultural production will be three or four or five
times greater. But it will not only be so here only. We hope that it will
be that way throughout the country. The children and the young people will
not only receive a good education in a magnificent installation but will
also receive optimum nourishment. They will receive a balanced diet. They
will eat a maximum of the foods that they need--fruit, milk, vegetables,
all foods.
We are also interested in seeing the effect that a hygienic, wholesome life
will have on those children, the effects of physical education and sports,
optimum nourishment. This means that all the children will receive
clothing, shoes, and food in the school and institutions and they will
receive it free, free. (applause)
Is this fact perhaps something of little importance? No. This has much
to do with a number of concepts. It has much to do with the general
concept of the way in which we wish to build socialism, and of the way in
which we wish to build communism.
The landowners, the cortinas, the foreman, and the rural guard used to tell
the peasant: "Socialism, that is terrible, communism, still more terrible.
They want to communize everything. They even want to communize your wife."
(laughter)
The rural guards, the official thugs, the foremen, and the landowners used
to say that, and yet they were precisely the ones who really wanted to
communize women, as the Manifesto of Karl Marx said, because if they could
they communized others: wives. If they were able, they communized the
peasant's daughter; and if they could take his wife from him, they did so.
They are the ones who tried to put those absurd ideas in the peasants'
minds, those lies, those fantasies.
Socialism and communism had nothing to do with the concept of women as
property, as a working tool. The capitalists had that concept of women.
What socialism had done with women is give them an opportunity to educate
their children, an opportunity to work, to free them forever from the
terrible necessity of having to become a prostitute some day to earn a
living, or the necessity of working in rich people's homes as a means of
livelihood.
What it has done is to give women dignity and a place of honor in society.
What it had done is concern itself with seeing that her children do not die
of disease or starvation, that they do not remain in ignorance, without
even learning to write their name.
The landowners, the bourgeois, the official thugs, the foremen, the corrupt
politicians invented a specter. After just a few years, how much the
people have been able to learn, in order to answer: No. This was not what
you used to say. It is this, that we are seeing today with our own eyes.
(applause) It is these schools, the roads, or the hospitals; it is these
children in uniform with a splendid future ahead of them; it is this joy.
It is even the chance to see national champions playing in games here,
playing for a championship, because formerly the people in the rural areas
could not even see the ball players in their games. Everything was
concentrated in the capital. Today you can enjoy that. You see the great
concept.
But how is progress made? How does one continue advancing along the road to
socialism and communism, which is the course that offers society the
greatest amount of happiness, the greatest amount of satisfaction, and the
greatest amount of goods?
There are persons who think, that if we give all these services free to the
peasants now, the peasants will become lazy, they will become good for
nothing, they will not work. Some believe that for man to have work, for
man to work, he has to feel the whiplash of dire need, the whiplash of
poverty, the whiplash of fear, so he will work.
Revolutionary ideas will truly be put to the test in this program. It is
true that in the past men worked spurred on by need, poverty, and fear. If
you went to some peasant's house and asked him what he intended to do with
the little pig, he would most likely have answered: "I am fattening him in
case I become sick or somebody in my family becomes sick, to pay the doctor
or buy medicine."
The first thing he thought of when he was raising some animal was not of
eating it, but of that terrible time when illness would knock on the
door--and to be sure, it did knock on doors frequently enough--of not
having to endure the anguish of having to go down hill--as they said
here--carrying the wife or child in a litter, without a centave in his
pocket, without knowing what doctor to see, or how in the dickens he was to
pay for the medicine. So he worked with that time in mind.
Others were thinking of some day buying shoes for their children, or (words
indistinct). And above all, he worked, as the peasants and workers said,
"to feed my children." What is the meaning of this answer always given by
every worker and peasant when he was asked what he was working for?
That worker and that peasant never said: I am working for myself, I am
working to provide myself with clothes, shoes, food, to gratify myself.
No. There was not one who could not answer: I am working to feed my
children, to feed my family.
What does that mean, I repeat? It means that historically, since man
became man, man has worked basically to provide for his family, to keep his
children and loved ones from starving. And that has perhaps been the force
that has exerted the most pressure on man to make man work. Because some
might not have minded so much going hungry but could not tolerate the idea
of their children going hungry, and since the children were entirely
dependent on the father's work, that sentiment induced men to put forth
efforts, to work hard, sometimes making tremendous sacrifices.
How many cases have we not known who were left widowed with three or four
children, or five, and who made tremendous efforts, washing, ironing, to
feed and educate them.
We now find that today all of the children, all, will have their nursery
with first-class food, clothing, and shoes or they will have their school.
Suddenly, no worker and no peasant from this region will feel the pressure
of having to work to feed his children. I would like to ask you, I want to
ask the peasants, I want to ask Emilio and all who resemble Emilio, to ask
Apolinar and all who resemble Apolinar--Apolinar has 23 children--23! He
says that nine are attending school. I imagine that the rest of them are
already men and women. I would like to ask them from the bottom of my
heart: Do you workers and men--we are accustomed to working, men who love
work--when this need disappears, when this need to raise a pig to pay the
doctor and to pay for medicines has disappeared, when the need to have
money to pay a teacher, to send the boy to town to study if possible, to
send him to learn a trade has disappeared, when the need to buy clothing
and shoes and the need to feed them disappears--when this happens, will the
men and women of San Andres de Caiguanabo become lazy. Will they become
loiterers? Will it be considered honorable, perhaps, for production to
decrease here in San Andres de Caiguanabo? (Isolated "no's" from the
crowd)
Now that man no longer has this burden, now that our men and women no
longer bear this anxiety, now that they no longer live under this
uncertainty and this suffering, now that they have a doctor nearby and have
transportation and do not have to haul a stretcher 28 kilometers, and
schools and everything are available to liberate man from his suffering,
from these fears and these pressures--will this spoil men? Or is it more
logical to suppose that these conditions will make man more responsible?
Will man work aimlessly or would it be perhaps more reasonable to believe
that man would work with more enthusiasm and more joyfully?
He will work less because money will no longer be as important to him,
since he sought money primarily to keep his children from starving. Now
that he is certain his children are no longer in danger of starving, money
can be used for other things. Man will no longer need money for those
things which formerly worried him. Will this cause the peasants of the San
Andres de Caiguanabo valley to quit producing? (Few "no's" from the crowd
after a moment of silence) How can we think that we will have less
production if, alongside the nurseries, we will have machinery, technology,
fertilizers, irrigation, a variety of better seeds, and (?better) breeds of
cattle?
How can we think that production will drop when, owing precisely to the
machinery, we will no longer have to exert brute, rigorous efforts as
before? How can we produce less when half of us working intensively can
produce three or four times as much with machinery and technology? It
is reasonable to think that San Andres de Caiguanabo will cease producing,
or, rather, will produce less wealth, less food, and fewer products? On
the contrary, it is possible to do all of this--to liberate the worker from
this burden which formerly weighted on him, from those pressures which
spurred him in the past--and simultaneously to produce three or four times
more.
What do we think? Do we think that under this plan San Andres will produce
more? That under this plan and with technology, we will have more manpower?
If women no longer have to cook to feed five or six children, if they do
not have to remain beside a wooden tray washing clothes for all these
children, how many hours do women devote to doing the children's laundry?
Just figure it out. In Apolinar's case, just imagine. (Laughter from the
audience) to have to wash clothing for 15 people at home--and using a
wooden tray at that! Who has an electric machine that does this washing? A
machine that irons? How many thousands of hours do women spend over the
washboard. These hours she can devote to joining and aiding her husband in
harvesting the tobacco, in gathering coffee, in any of the many activities
which women can do magnificently.
In addition, the older students, the students of the 300-internees
institutions who are strong and who will be even stronger as a result of
physical education and nourishment, will be able to participate in the
coffee harvest. They will be able to participate in production by washing
the machines when the wooden laundry tray is replaced by the washing
machine, when the little pot over the family stove is replaced by these
big caldrons with a food capacity for 100 or 200 persons.
We will liberate the women from thousands upon thousands of hours of doing
their kind of work. We will free still more manpower capable of
accomplishing even more because of added technology. We will work with
even more enthusiasm because now, everyone will have one more reason to
work. Everyone will have one more thing to stimulate him to work.
Everyone will feel a greater joy toward work. We do not think that
production will decrease. We believe and we dare to affirm that under the
plan which we are carrying out--the study of land parcel by land parcel--we
produced in San Andres de Caiguanabo. (applause)
The reactionaries mistrust man; they mistrust mankind. They think that a
human being is still something of a beast--that he moves only under the
lash of a whip. They think that man can perform noble things motivated
merely by an egotistical interest. The revolutionary man has a much higher
concept by man; he sees man not as a beast. He considers man capable of
superior forms of life and superior forms of conduct, capable of being
stimulated by superior motives. The revolutionary man believes in man; he
believes in the human race. If one does not believe in a human being, then
he is not a revolutionary.
We will put these ideas to the test here, right here. Here in San Andres
and in Banao and in a great land, throughout our entire homeland! These
ideas are fighting it out throughout the world--these ideas which we can
call revolutionary and reactionary. They have to do with ways of building
socialism, of constructing communism. In many places, reactionary ideas
are gaining strength and are making inroads. Faith in man is lost. In our
land, revolutionary ideas gain strength. Faith in the human being grows.
We who consider ourselves revolutionaries and expect confidently that we
will not be our own judges, but that time will prove us right--we know and
are conscious that in a world in which many reactionary ideas gather
strength, even, hear this, under alleged revolutionary standards and even
while flourishing Marxist-Leninist terminology, we move in holding
revolutionary ideas high, not brandishing those ideas, but believing
profoundly in them, believing profoundly in the human being, and we
embark upon that course. There are doubtless many throughout the world who
wish for our failure. There are doubtless many who prefer the failure of
the more revolutionary persons to the confession that they themselves were
not really revolutionaries. (applause)
We will study man very deeply here; we will study very carefully the
science of the training and education of man. Doubtless, these centers
will be places in the world where even pedagogy will be tested. The
existence or nonexistence of pedagogy will be tested. Whether society is
or is not capable of educating its members will be tested--whether it is
capable of awakening in men a better conscience and higher sentiments.
That is why, all those who are interested in pedagogy will have to come
here to San Andres to see what is happening in San Andres and how things
are going to San Andres--how the minds and intelligence of those youths and
those children are being trained and how they are being educated, not only
receiving culture and instruction but also preparation for life.
It is possible that never before has such a young group of professors and
teachers shouldered such a great responsibility, such a sacred duty,
because never before have certain ideas been tested under these
circumstances. Never before has a group of revolutionary militants had the
responsibility held by the party comrades in San Andres de Caiguanabo,
because basic ideas are going to be tested here in the field of production.
Never, perhaps, will a human community play the role in the field of
revolutionary theory, revolutionary ideas, and revolutionary concepts to be
played by this population, the men and women of this valley of San Andres
de Caiguanabo, (applause) because basic ideas are going to be tested.
The first thing to do when success is desired, when a goal is to be
reached, is to have a clear idea of that goal--the mass method--to get the
population to consider itself an army for that idea, to get each man,
woman, teacher, youth, and child to consider himself the guardian of that
idea, the standard bearer of that idea, the soldier of that idea. That is
necessary when a great goal is to be achieved. (applause) And we who
defend those ideas, believe in those ideas, and believe in the human being
have no doubt about the results. We have no doubt that the correctness of
our viewpoints will be proved and we do not expect any failure.
We will carry out this new and revolutionary plan. Countless benefits will
be received by all the children and, with them, the families. The means of
oppression that forced men to be an ox and to work like an ox, will
disappear from this community. However, man, ceasing to be an ox in order
to be a man with labor becoming more suited to man, will produce three,
four, five times more here than was produced in the past. Triumph here
means we will triumph in the rest of the country.
Triumph here will mean triumph in all the valleys of this province and
triumph in all the rural areas of our fatherland, because men and women
like you live in the rest of the country. Men and women like you live in
the rural areas of Las Villas, Oriente, Camaguey, Matanzas, and Havana.
If, following correct methods, awakening the enthusiasm of the families,
working with the masses, awakening their conscience and enthusiasm, we
triumph here, we will triumph throughout the island. If our ideas are
victorious here, they will be victorious the length and breadth of the
island. (applause)
In the fullest sense of the word, you here today are the standard bearers,
the vanguard. Men and women of San Andres de Caiguanabo, youths, girls:
This plan being initiated today is that important. In your hands is the
task of bringing the ideas involved in this plan to victory. In your hands
is the banner. You are the vanguard, and the rest of your brothers, the
workers of our rural areas, will be watching what happens here. We will
all be attentive. We who are interested in man and in the human being, we
who believe in the human being and who are interested in revolutionary
ideas, who want a better life, a better society, a happier life for man--we
shall be watching what happens here. And, absolutely certain that you are
aware of this, I am not afraid to state that we will be successful; I am
not afraid to state that our concepts and our ideas will triumph.
Fatherland or death, we shall win!
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